Texas: Pilot Accidentally Drops iPhone 9,300 Feet From Airplane, Finds It Still Working Normally

A Texas-based pilot thought he had lost his precious iPhone forever after it accidentally dropped from a plane 9,300 feet above the ground. Imagine Ben Wilson’s surprise when he figured that he was still able to track his phone and eventually discovered that that it had survived the fall!

According to the Wichita Falls Times Record which first reported the story, the owner of the iPhone, Ben Wilson, who also owns the natural-gas equipment company Gas Corporation of America, was flying his private plane — a Beechcraft Bonanza single-engine aircraft from Houston to Wichita Falls, Texas, when the door of his plane opened slightly and the phone fell off it. Wilson did not immediately realize that his iPhone was missing. In fact, only after he landed at the airport did he figure out that his phone was nowhere to be seen.

When Wilson told his stepson John Kidwell about what had happened, John decided to use the Find My iPhone service on his phone. Amazingly, the phone still showed Ben’s phone as “active.” In fact, he was able to correctly pinpoint the location where the iPhone currently was. As per the map, the iPhone that has fallen off the skies was 90 miles away in the town of Joplin, Texas. The duo decided to go ahead and find the phone themselves. Wilson was particularly worried about the 250 contacts and over 1,000 photos that were stored in the phone and he did not want to lose them. Soon, they reached the area where the phone apparently fell. They figured that it was a fenced-in pasture.

After looking in the area for a few minutes, they found the iPhone! It was nestled in thick grass below a tree which Wilson believes had cushioned the fall of the iPhone, preventing damage.

The phone was working fine as if nothing had happened. The only sign that it had fallen off an airplane were a few scratches on the edges. He was able to make phone calls, and all other functions worked normally. Thankfully for Wilson, he had used a protective casing for the iPhone that came with an external battery pack. This casing is also believed to have cushioned the impact and did not let the fall damage the iPhone. The battery pack was missing from the casing, though.

Meanwhile, Wilson is still stumped over the fact that his iPhone survived the 9,300 foot fall. He confirmed the height of the fall by calculating the height his plane was at while flying over the place where the iPhone was found.

The iPhone has, in the past, been famous for surviving insurmountable odds.

[Image Via TimesRecordNews]